


Damage Control

by arcanemoody



Series: Metamour [4]
Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Bisexual Male Character, Cats, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Meg Halsey Lives, Other, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Reunions, Trauma, V-Shaped Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22591762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanemoody/pseuds/arcanemoody
Summary: The morning after. Meg Halsey survives the "Miskatonic Massacre" (and now she has to save everyone else).
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West, Daniel Cain/Megan Halsey, Daniel Cain/Megan Halsey/Herbert West
Series: Metamour [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1213551
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	Damage Control

The hospital swaps Dan’s shirt for a gown but neglects to provide her with underwear. Even the standard disposable pair given to post-surgery patients to preserve their dignity in recovery has been denied pending… something the nurse is afraid to say. But is likely related to the blood currently congealing in her pubic hair.  
  
A standard rape kit will turn up very little, Meg knows. She _knows._ There was no penetration, barely any fluid contact apart from the blood Dr. Hill had been soaked in from the chin downward. Even in death, removed of inhibitions, the man who had stalked her for half of her life knew how to not leave a mark. To make sure that she wouldn’t be believed.   
  
She hates him.   
  
She's glad he's dead.  
  
She wishes he'd had the good grace to _stay dead_ the first time.   
  
The officer’s voice is a steady drone in her ear as she watches the floor, fingers clenched around the hem of her gown, pressing the ends firmly against the end of the examination table. Dr. Harrod is a stable presence at her right shoulder, emoting disapproval as usual and something else. The fact that she’s the one there and not one of the nurses from third shift makes Meg even more nervous.   
  
As if the gravity of the scene she just escaped isn’t enough, there’s a palpable awareness that she’s the dean’s daughter, that the dean himself is dead, two prominent members of the university are dead. 

Someone has to be held responsible.  
  
“Miss Halsey, we can do this another time if you like.”

Meg sucks in a breath, ignoring the ache in her throat and the way her chest locks up tight, not allowing additional oxygen in. Two roads diverging. Two fates dropped in her lap. That this decision would be hers is almost laughable in the wake of the last week. She makes it quickly.

“It was Dr. Hill,” she says, looking up to meet the officer’s gaze. “He hurt Daddy. He took me from my house and brought me here. I don’t know why. He attacked me.”  
  
“And Mr. Cain and Mr. West?”  
  
“They were… you want to put this on _Dan and Herbert?!_ ”  
  
“Miss Halsey--” Flinching. He was flinching. People flinched away from anger and hysteria (but they always believed it).   
  
“Dan and Herbert were trying to help! Herbert was the first one in there to get me out. How dare you!”

Technically true, like all the best lies. Simple and refined, the kind of dissection she is well-practiced in after half a life of compartmentalizing.  
  
“Miss Halsey, I need you to remain calm.”  
  
“Fuck you! You remain calm! That man took me from my house! He tore my nightgown! Dan and Herbert were trying to help, you son of a bitch!” She feels the prick of a needle in her upper arm, and everything goes hazy at the edges.   
  
“Officer, you have your answer,” Dr. Harrod’s stern voice was the last thing she heard before she let the darkness pull her under. “Now I’m going to ask you to leave and let my patient rest...”  
  
\--  
  
She finally gets underwear around 11am, after the sedative wears off; after some water and saltines, after the rape kit and an aborted sponge bath that results in her kicking an orderly and stalking into the bathroom to do it herself.   
  
Along with the underwear, they give her a pair of soft blue scrubs with too-long pants legs she has to roll up to avoid tripping. Her nightgown and underwear are evidence. Dan's shirt probably is, too. The hospital staff neglect to bring her a pair of shoes or slip socks -- probably thinking that will be enough to keep her in the recovery ward in case the police want to come back with more questions.  
  
It doesn't.  
  
She walks down the hall and out the front door, barefoot. She stalks across the university quad, ignoring the frost laden grass, mud puddles, occasional broke glass. If she leaves a trail of blood and dirt in her wake through the student union, neither she nor the other students take much notice. The student worker on the third floor barely looks up until she appears at the counter, slapping her her hand down on cheap plastic and particle board.  
  
"My name is Megan Halsey. ID number: C011985 I need to speak with the Dean of Students, please."  
  
\--  
  
The Dean of Students approves administrative withdrawals for her, Dan, and West in less than an hour.   
  
The hospital bracelet around her wrist and the headline in the morning paper is literally all Meg needs to guarantee her authority to speak for all three of them: she has a bruised larynx that doesn't need a hospital stay to heal but will impact her work for the remainder of the semester. West has scarring on his lungs from breathing in caustic chemicals and he will be in the hospital for an undetermined amount of time. Dan is mostly unharmed physically, but, being relatively well, compared to her and Herbert, he will probably face debriefing from the police and the school; might potentially face referrals to the board regarding his scholarships, meetings with financial aid reps to make sure even an approved late withdrawal won't cause an interruption to his needs-based aid. 

The Dean herself says very little apart from "Yes, Miss Halsey" and seems relieved by the abrupt appearance of the office manager with shoes and a coat from the lost and found. Meg puts them on while she's still in the room, lacing the too small teal sneakers and buttoning the wool pea coat that smells like coffee grounds. She doesn't leave until she has all three copies of their paperwork with the requisite signatures on them. The second of which takes an extra 20 minutes as Uncle Upton has to be retrieved from the main lecture hall, having taken over the 10am neurology lab due to... well, something none of them want to discuss.   
  
"We're sorry, Megan," he whispers on his way hour, a soft hand on her shoulder that she can't help but flinch away from.  
  
She tucks the folder under her arm, takes a deep breath before stepping out into the hall, out of the building, and out on to the edge of the campus. Halloween is less than a week away and they've got until January 2 to pull themselves together and be ready to resume their course work.   
  
\--  
  
The house at 666 Darkmore is empty when she arrives.   
  
At least, that's what she thinks at first.   
  
Her key is in the door, and she barely as time to reach for the light switch before there's a blur of white fur in the corner of her eye.   
  
Flamepoint Siamese, at least six months old, wearing a purple collar from the Whately Animal Shelter. Her heart leaps in to her throat and she crumples to the floor as the new arrival creeps closer, candy pink nose sniffing the air around her. It's... endearing, brings new tears to her eyes as she offers her hand out for the tiny nose to sniff.   
  
She's still purring in Meg's lap when the sound of a car lumbers up the driveway and a familiar tall figure stumbles in the door.   
  
"You got a new cat?" she asks, looking up to meet wide dark eyes.  
  
Dan shakes his head, unblinking. It's only then she finally takes in the paper tag attached to the back of the collar.  
  
_'NOT AN EXPERIMENT.'  
_  
Of course.   
  
"How did it go?" she asks.  
  
"Long. Both of them. Shorter than my visit at the beginning of the year, though -- I don't think the police are going to ask me for another statement. And my scholarship and grants are apparently safe..."  
  
She nods, tucking her face down against pale fur. Herbert's expulsion and Dan's suspension, the impetus behind that first failed experiment, had been all but forgotten. Her father, it seems, never got around to filing the paperwork for either decision. Too caught up in the fog of Dr. Hill's instructions to catch West and his future son-in-law in the act of doing something criminal, something "unnatural." Thinking about that almost helps -- still one more thing she can blame on the man who haunted her for most of her adolescence before he decided leering at her over her father's dining room table wasn't enough.

She points to the folder on the end table.  
  
"Your emergency withdrawal for the semester. Set to resume in Spring. The university board will want this wrapped up quickly, “ she says. “By the time West can talk again, the police may have already closed the case."

Dan nods, eyes far away for a split second.  
  
"My house is a crime scene," she says, the grim fact only now just hitting her.   
  
"I'll make you some breakfast," he replies, helpfully scrambling.   
  
He makes her eggs and toast, opens a tin of tuna for the cat. He does the same thing at lunch time, and dinner. And the next day, and the next. Until they run out of eggs and bread and their Mutual Autopilot Mode is disrupted.

\--

The medical examiner releases her father's body to her care the same day West gets cleared for hospital visitation.   
  
Meg arranges to have him cremated, ashes interred with her mother in Christchurch Cemetery. There will be no funeral. The school will honor him in June anyway -- the way they've always honored students, faculty, and members of staff lost in accidents, disappeared without a trace on mysterious expeditions, in the wrong place at the wrong time when a local terror decides to sweep through. She'll save the public tears for then, if there are any left.  
  
She never kept any clothes at Dan's place before. The implication of impropriety had been too much for her to work around, one more thing that could have potentially caught her stalker's attention... She changes out of the scrub shirt she's worn for three days, helping herself to a long-sleeved raglan tee from Dan's closet.   
  
Talking Heads. The "Remain in Light" tour.   
  
"I think that looks better on you than it did on me," he says, leaning in the doorway. Casual, charming sweetness emanating from every pore.   
  
The tightness in her chest loosens some at the display: enchanted, endeared, relieved to feel that... _thing,_ that lovely thing between Dan and her that she'd never had with anyone else. That ease that has been there between them since the beginning. The man who was as normal as her home was abnormal (but still never "normal enough" for his conservative southern family and neighbors), who would save her from the madness.. and who, in the end, she'd had to save. And would go on saving.  
  
"I'm not leaving." She eyes Dan meaningfully, surprised at the certainty in her own tone.   
  
"I'm not either," he says, eyes steadfast on hers, resolve and relief in his own gaze.   
  
"I really... I don’t want to go back to that house." 

The house where she was abducted. The house where she nursed and cared for her father for a decade after her mother's death. Where she'd always (ALWAYS) felt a pair of eyes on her, whether "Uncle Carl" was visiting or not. Just a house, never a home.  
  
"Stay with us," Dan implores.

And there's the rub: not 'me.' _Us._ Her life in that house vs. her life here. Dan would probably have liked to be compared with her father's genial nature, while West would revile and vehemently protest any inference at being like Hill.  
  
"Okay."  
  
It's not as if she has anywhere else to go.  
  
\--  
  
The kitten reacts remarkably well to new people -- the vets are amazed at her condition and her reaction to treatment after being left alone for a prolonged period of time. The trip to the vet is swiftly followed by a trip to the hospital to see West.  
  
West had escaped police questioning -- and, likely, involuntary observation at Sefton Asylum -- by virtue of the fact that 1) he was initially unconscious when the police arrived and 2) when he did wake up, he wasn't able to speak. The chemicals he'd inhaled in the melee damaged his larynx and vocal chords. Nothing for it but time to heal which will no doubt frustrate him, even as it buys Dan and Meg enough time to compare statements and feed details back to their conspirator before his own interview.  
  
"He was taken for observation in Zürich," she says, the details of his file coming back to her as they pull the car into the visitor's space. "After the death of his mentor. Did he tell you that?"

"He told me," Dan answers, almost guarded, protective of both of them.   
  
"I read the whole file," she says it as if it's new information, as though she hadn't been eager to tell Dan days earlier, ready to break the hold his boyfriend seemed to have on him. "The report said that he spent hours trying to revive the body. But that's not what he was really doing, was it?"  
  
"The reagent was Gruber’s project -- his life’s work. That first trial run was his idea. Herbert panicked and gave him too large a dose. It's the same thing that happened in the morgue."  
  
Meg blinks. His mentor's work... it works. And now the three of them know just how well it works.   
  
“Wow. I... I really wish he hadn't made that first mistake."  
  
She's sure West does, too.

\--  
  
West is awake when they arrive. His usual imperious expression gone (likely due to the loss of both his glasses and his voice; hard to be intimidating when you can't see in front of you or mime even simple consonants), and something in his eyes, for a second, looks more than a little lost.   
  
Dan's hand is on him in an instant. Soothing.  
  
"Hi, sweetheart! Hello...You look good... I couldn't hold on, I'm sorry. I'm _so sorry_." His whispered voice is almost mournful; ike it's his fault. As if West hadn't already been practically tucked under Dan's arm, ready to run for safety when the idiot dove back into the chaos.   
  
Meg eyes the door, hyper aware that a member of the night staff could come in at any moment and she and Dan will be ushered outside – out of the room and out of the hospital -- before they can relay any information to West. His fingers are on Dan's face when she turns around. There's a spike of something that she clamps down on instinctively. She can sort it out once they're all home, and not expecting police or homophobic nurses to wander in.  
  
"We’ve put it all on Hill," she says, meeting West's gaze. "He's the reason Daddy went crazy that first night. He’s the one who attacked me. The two of you were caught in the crossfire."  
  
There's a glint of recognition. As though he had planned a similar explanation days earlier. He nods slowly, blinking as Dan’s fingers smooth the hair from his brow.  
  
"[Work]..." he mouths, his hand hovering in the vicinity of his chest, possessive. My work. The work. As in the research that had gotten her father killed and turned the rest of their world upside-down...  
  
If she punches him, the nursing staff will _definitely_ come running in.  
  
"If you want to implicate him in stealing your research, there's a good chance the police will take your notes and whatever's left of your serum as part of the investigation," her voice stern even as she marvels at being able to get the words out. "Your basement lab, the equipment you took from the school, all of that comes out in discovery. Is that what you want?"  
  
West looks mutinous, bleary eyes throwing green sparks.  
  
“ _Is that what you want?_ ” she repeats.  
  
"She’s right, Herbert. Look, he stole Gruber's original research, right? And you humiliated him in lectures over and over again! In front of dozens of witnesses. It's a good enough reason for him to pop off and attack you when you tried to intervene."  
  
And hadn't that been what happened in the first place?  
  
Herbert's mouth is a grim line, hazel eyes flickering from her to Dan and back, eventually landing back on hers.

He nods, squeezing Dan's fingers. 

Meg sighs, finally able to breathe. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was a hard one to write. Trauma brain and functioning on auto-pilot is, unfortunately, a far too common occurrence for some of us. Meg manages it better than I ever did (and, as we see in both films, Dan). The functional supports of this triad in Lovecraft Country are coming together. 
> 
> First appearance of Mona, first appearance of Edward Upton (the son of Daniel Upton in "The Thing on the Doorstep"). Miskatonic legacies tend to stick around.


End file.
